Captain Alan takes his time

New Zealand refugee Alan Brough has a dark secret on his CV.Photo: Estelle Judah

Michael Lallo meets a wistful rogue who's in exile from
New Zealand.

ALAN BROUGH is one of the rarest of species: the music buff you
don't want to punch in the face. Not only is he free of rock expert
pretensions, he's genuinely quite likeable.

"You'll never get any dirt on Alan," says an assistant as she
ushers the audience into a taping of Spicks and Specks,
the ABC music quiz show for which Brough is best known. "Everybody
loves him."

On cue, comedian Frank Woodley leaps out from behind a corner.
"Alan asked if you got that cocaine he wanted," cries the regular
Spicks guest.

But Brough reckons he's missed his chance to live the rockstar
lifestyle. "I would have loved to have been hugely famous at 18 and
then burnt out in a drugged haze," he says. "But I've just turned
39, so that's not going to happen."

Maybe a mid-life crisis will provide a second shot at
infamy?

"No, getting older is actually working out quite well," he says.
"I've always been a slow learner, but as I go along, I seem to be
getting slightly more proficient."

That's perhaps an understatement. Over the past few years, New
Zealand-born Brough has quietly established himself as one of
Australia's most diverse comic talents. Movies, TV, radio,
stand-up, theatre - he's done them all. Acted, written and
directed, that is.

Of course, there's also Spicks and Specks, on which
Brough is a team captain. Now entering its third year, the
highly-successful program shows no signs of losing any of its
million-plus viewers.

He attributes the show's success to lots of things - host Adam
Hills and opposing team captain Myf Warhurst (both of whom he
lavishes with praise), the guests, the variety of music, it's
"old-fashioned" sense of fun - everything but himself.

Yet he is undoubtedly a key ingredient. For a start, there's his
idiot savant-like musical knowledge. "When I rang my mother to tell
her I was working on Spicks and Specks, she said, 'Oh,
that's good - all those stupid things you know will finally make
you some money.' "

But Brough's appeal also comes from his gift for the one-liner.
A task, he says, that is made effortless by the ludicrous album
covers and video clips frequently aired on the show.

"Half the job's done when you show an album like Have a Jewish
Christmas," he says. "It's pretty easy to make jokes about things
like that."

Indeed, most things appear to come easily to Brough. Since he
emigrated from New Zealand in 1995, he seems to have effortlessly
fallen into work. But few realise he's actually in "self-imposed
exile".

The reason? His first main screen role, in the 1993 sitcom
Melody Rules. Brough can barely utter the name of the show without
shuddering.

"One of the reasons I moved to Australia was because of that
show," he says.

I laugh, thinking he's exaggerating. He's not.

"It truly was one of the reasons," he stresses. "It was such a
horrendous experience and I was so embarrassed by it, I had to go
overseas."

Given the small size of the Kiwi entertainment industry, Brough
had no option but to flee. Yet New Zealand, he believes, remains
the perfect training ground for aspiring performers.

"I had to learn to do all these different things, which means I
can generally find jobs now."

Born and raised in the town of Hawera, Brough first took to the
stage when he was four at the encouragement of his father, also an
actor. His first performance was not a success.

"I was the little drummer boy in a Christmas pageant," he says.
"I was just about to play when Mum and Dad walked in, and I went,
'Hello!' and waved and walked up to them. My father was absolutely
mortified."

Soon after, Brough was expelled from kindergarten. He still
doesn't know why.

"There was a little note in my lunchbox that said, 'Mrs Brough,
we'd like Alan not to come back.' No one could work out why."

When he reached his teens, Brough was sent to a Catholic boys'
boarding school.

"I got the shit beaten out of me all the time," he says. Among
the transgressions that earnt him a flogging were his ability to
pronounce the name of his home town ("A guy punched me in the head
because he thought I was a poof for saying it correctly") and his
regular casting as female characters in school plays.

A half-hearted attempt at a law degree followed before Brough
chose to focus on acting, making a name for himself in live comedy,
drama and as a transvestite in a margarine commercial.

Then came Melody Rules. Unsure of where to take refuge,
his girlfriend Helen Townshend suggested Melbourne.

They moved, and he's been busy ever since. Most notably, he's
appeared in The Nugget and Bad Eggs, co-hosted
Tough Love on Triple M with Mick Molloy and Robyn Butler,
done a stint on Sydney breakfast radio and regularly writes, acts
in and directs theatre and stand-up shows.

One of his proudest achievements was giving Sharon Strezlecki
"pash rash" in Kath & Kim. "(Magda Szubanski) is
brilliant, a really fine actor," he says. "But I think that gets a
bit lost because people think funny is easy."

This is the reason, according to Brough, why women traditionally
comprise the majority of live comedy audiences.

"A lot of men are very competitive," says Brough, who neither
drives nor owns a mobile phone. "They go, 'I can do that; I'm
f---in' funny'."

With his one-man Melbourne International Comedy Festival show
Top Town in the works, he'll soon see if this remains true.

"One of the lovely things about theatre is that it isn't real,"
he says.

"We get bombarded with CGI, but people like things that are
clearly pretend. Me standing on stage pretending to be a lady is me
standing on stage pretending to be a lady."